Whaling Days

On the Friday evening of the last weekend in July, street and food vendors open at five o’clock across Old Town Silverdale. By half past six the first band is playing on the main stage at Silverdale Waterfront Park, which stands next to the water. In 2026 that band was Flor De Luna, playing Latin rock and Santana. Harmonious Funk followed at 8:30 with Top 40s, R&B and funk.

The lawn before the stage is free. The beer and wine garden, also in front of the stage, charges a $5 cover to those 21 and over who show ID. Every drink costs $7, or three for $20, and the choices are beers, ciders, White Claws and non-alcoholic beer. The organizers say the garden’s entry and sales pay for the fireworks, the stage, the performers, “and a lot of things no one thinks about.”

The festival is run by Silverdale Whaling Days, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit with a board of directors and many volunteers. Its sponsor page thanks “the Old Town businesses that continually allow the Silverdale Whaling Days festival to monopolize their time, space, and resources.”

Three days between the mall and the park

Saturday begins at 8:15 a.m. at the Kitsap Mall with A Whale of a Run, put on by Kitsap Running. It offers a 4-mile race, a 1-mile walk/run, a Kids Dash and a non-competitive Fun Dash for Special Olympics athletes. Kitsap Running billed the 2026 race as its 44th.

At ten the Silverdale Lions Grand Parade comes along Silverdale Way, with a grandstand area by Grocery Outlet. In 2026 the Tracyton Pee Wee Sports Association, sponsored by the festival, marched and danced the route in Whaling Days Santa hats.

When the parade is done, the crowd moves down to Old Town. The festival counted 150 street vendors and 24 food vendors in 2026. Among the food booths were The Smokin Robinsons Cafe, Jamaica Mi Hungry Kitchen and La Perrona Crepes, and Sub-Zero Candy & Snacks sold freeze-dried candy from two booths.

A 12-foot video wall shows cartoons and runs Mario Kart, and at 8 p.m. on Friday and Saturday it shows a movie. The information booth at Byron and Washington has been staffed for many years by the Greater Kitsap Chamber. It handles visitor questions, first aid and lost and found, and it sells drawing tickets for prizes such as gift cards to local shops, martial arts lessons with the uniform included, housewares and gift baskets.

Saturday’s 2026 stage ran from noon to ten:

• Danny Vernon’s Illusions of Elvis
• Wyrdoz, playing covers for children
• Bad Honey, with rock and roll and blues
• LiquidHorse, with Northwest country rock
• Drop It Like It’s Yacht, with yacht rock
• 13 Til Midnight, a Taylor Swift tribute

At 5:30 that evening the KDDA Demolition Derby ran at Thunderbird Stadium on the Kitsap County Fair Grounds.

Sunday is shorter, eleven to six, with karaoke, crafts and Chalk the Park. Champagne Sunday played glam folk and the Megan & Heidi Band played Top 40s. Joel Gibson Jr. closed the 2026 festival with Northwest country rock from 4:00 to 5:45. A shuttle from the Macy’s entrance at the Kitsap Mall runs Friday and Saturday only.

Santa on the waterfront in July

The 2026 festival took a Christmas theme. The children’s area was named Candy Cane Lane. The Grinch, Santa and Mrs. Claus, Chuck E. Cheese and a band of pirates posed for photographs, and a Santa’s Chair was set out for group pictures. Rides included a carousel, a Play Port and a bungee jump, at $5 a ride or $20 for an all-day bracelet, with the giant slide extra. Sponsors put up trees for a scavenger hunt, and the information booth sold Santa hats and Christmas socks. From six on Saturday evening Santa sat in the gazebo, called Santa’s House, handing out bells and golden tickets while supplies lasted.

The weather that weekend, the organizers wrote, was “super hot, then super windy,” with rain besides. They allowed that the Christmas theme “was a little fitting with the weird weather.” Afterward they posted: “We had some crazy weather but despite that our performers, vendors and suppliers showed up, stuck it out and you all showed up too!”

Rubber ducks over the side

At three on Sunday the stage gives way to the Silverdale Rotary Duck Race and the festival raffle. Visitors adopt ducks ahead of time to support the Rotary club’s work.

The Kitsap Daily News described the 2023 race. Crowds lined the waterfront while roughly two cubic yards of small, very yellow rubber ducks were dumped over the side of a Suquamish Seafoods vessel. They came from a custom-made holding pen built decades ago for the purpose. The ducks rode the tide into a small chute that forced them into single file to be counted.

Silver Whale Furniture

Silverdale has no whaling past. The Kitsap Daily News asked the question in 2023 and answered it plainly: “Research says no.”

The name’s source came from Brenda Kelley, the board’s treasurer that year. Just before 1974, she told the paper, several local event organizers combined their efforts into a single charitable community event and asked for suggestions for a name. Her grandmother, Connie Cummings, submitted “Whaling Days,” after Silver Whale Furniture, her store on what is now Silverdale Way. Kelley remembers riding on the store’s float as a child.

The paper placed the festival, inaugurated in 1974, beside the Kitsap County Fair and Stampede, first held in 1923, as the two summer events that come to mind in the county. By 2023 the board expected about $150,000 in revenue after a couple of down years caused by flooding and COVID. The money pays for the festival and goes to local groups.

The donation lists for 2023 name Boy Scout Troop 1540, Melt My Heart Rescue, Scarlet Road and CK Backpacks 4 Kids. The 2024 list adds the Central Kitsap Food Bank and senior graduation assistance in the Central Kitsap School District. In 2026 the festival gave the beer garden’s tips to children’s sports.

The Silverdale Whaling Days Hank Mann Sykes Scholarship asks applicants to show community involvement and volunteer work. Its list of recipients runs back to 2008. The 2025 winners were Amelia Duncan of Olympic High School and Nicholas Strickland of Central Kitsap High School.

The 2023 festival, the 49th, was a little different from the present one. Saturday had what the paper called “the traditional Kiwanis Parade.” Sunday held a second run, the Dyes Inlet Dash, and a cornhole tournament in the beer garden, and the east end of the park served as a Family Stage for children’s acts. The board meant to enlarge the festival for its 50th anniversary.

By 2026 the organizers were calling it the festival’s 53rd year. That year’s schedule announced its Friday dusk show as the festival’s first-ever fireworks. Of the 49th festival, in 2023, the Kitsap Daily News had reported one of the largest fireworks shows the event had ever put on.